


A New Chance

by amortentiando



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Harry Potter was Raised by Remus Lupin and Sirius Black, Headcanon, Multi, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-12-17 14:12:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11853258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amortentiando/pseuds/amortentiando
Summary: Things happened a little differently in the night of October 31st, 1981. Sirius and Remus convinced Dumbledore to let them raise Harry, and the kid had a happy, healthy childhood. From that moment on we know what happens in the story... But instead of being raised by oblivious muggles, Harry has his two uncles to go to when things get bad. Besides helping Harry through his years at Hogwarts, they will also tell the stories they lived themselves in their Hogwarts era as the Marauders.





	1. 0. A new beginning

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a brazilian writer, and my fics are translated with the help of the sweet and awesome Kate (@nineandthreequarterrs on Tumblr), but some words and/or expressions may sound weird or wrong, and for that I'm sorry.

Hagrid had been the first to step on the ruins of the destroyed house at the end of a street in Godric's Hollow – at least as far as anyone knows. At the behest of Dumbledore, he was the first to discover the body of James Potter among the rubble, meters away from his wand in the corner of the room. The giant man wanted to cry with that terrible image because he knew the kid, saw him grow up, and it was clear that he’d had no chance. Hagrid wanted to take his body away from that mess and put him in a clean place, take care of him, but then remembered what Dumbledore had ordered him to do, which was to get the kid out of there as soon as possible – Harry was the priority. So he went upstairs to what was left from the second floor, which had mostly fallen in the living room downstairs with the explosion, leaving only the kid's room and a piece of the hall safe.  
The scenario was devastating. Not because of the rubble, dust or not because of the state of the house, but because when entering the room almost untouched of the little boy, the first thing he could see was Lily Potter's body lying on the floor in front of the crib, her eyes wide open staring at nothing, her red hair still shiny. Anyone who saw that scene would understand what happened: the sacrifice of a mother to her child, the child who was sitting in the cradle behind the girl, looking too much confused for even crying like it was expected of a child, with a huge cut in his forehead.  
Hagrid couldn’t stop the thick tears from flowing down his face and getting lost in his vast beard. He could barely see, and for long minutes he stood in the same place staring at the girl's body, not daring to step over her and pick up the boy, trying to digest the full act of love and sacrifice of that family, that whole and happy family, young and strong until a few minutes ago. The protective instincts of the giant towards animals or people smaller than him (like almost everyone was) always talked louder and acted instantly to protect minors, but even so, because of his shock and sadness, it was hard to find the courage to get to Harry. When he finally managed to move and clean up the tears on the sleeve of his robes to see straight, he came close to Harry carefully to get the boy who now sniffled, wanting to cry, but before Hagrid could get him he heard noise in the rubble of the floor below and was alert.  
Hagrid pulled his umbrella from within his robes and turned to the door, hearing the footsteps stop downstairs. He strained his ears and, because the night was quiet as if it was mourning, he could easily hear the whispers downstairs:  
“James... No, James, no... No. Prongs. Oh, my God.”  
It Was Sirius. Hagrid recognized at the same time and, taking Harry now rapidly but carefully, held the little kid in his lap and went down to the floor below soon finding Sirius Black down on the floor over his best friend's body.  
“Sirius...”  
“What have I done, God?! What have I done!” He now cried, holding James’s body against his own in his lap. “James! Oh, my God, I'm sorry. I...”  
“Sirius!” Hagrid called, unconcerned. He was trying so hard not to cry again wildly now that he held baby Harry.  
The boy seemed to hear the giant's voice for the first time, and looked at him in alarm. His face, disfigured with grief, seemed to ease a little as he saw the little boy in Hagrid's lap. He rose to go to Harry and hesitated to touch him as he saw the cut on his forehead. The dark haired man was speechless now, and for a while no one spoke, only felt the almost unbearable weight of that disgrace.  
“Li... Lily.” Black forced the word out of his almost closed throat as his friend appeared in his mind, in the midst of all the confusion of pain and regret he felt. He looked at the giant's face and felt the lancinating pain again piercing his chest as he understood it. "No..." He shook his head when he realized. “No, not her too...”  
Wishing he could say otherwise, Hagrid nodded, letting other tears fall, but he couldn’t help himself. He could only watch as Sirius leaned forward with a hand on his chest, leaned on his knees, and kneel down on the floor for a moment.  
"She's... Upstairs," Hagrid murmured, but stopped when he saw the boy at his feet shake his head.  
“I can’t. I don’t... ..." The boy couldn’t find the air to breathe.  
"Si... Sirius, I'm so sorry, I... Dumbledore said...”  
"I did this..." The boy was saying, and Hagrid couldn’t understand. "I... Peter.”  
Suddenly Black lifted his head, his hair on his face, and he seemed determined to something. He stood up and looked at Hagrid.  
“I need to find him. About Harry... We can...”  
"Sirius, that's what I need to tell you. Dumbledore will have him taken to his uncle's house in Surrey.”  
“What?!”  
"He-" Hagrid hesitated, then composed himself. He believed in Dumbledore with his whole being. "He said I should take Harry to Surrey, and do it right away.”  
“No! I'm his godfather, he stays with me!” Black looked around briefly and brushed the hair back from his face, upset. "I need to find Peter, Hagrid, but Harry stays with me, he's not going anywhere. Is Dumbledore crazy?! Lily's sister? She hates wizards! She hated her own sister!”  
"I'm sorry, Sirius. They’re direct orders from Dumbledore and I believe he knows what he’s doing better than anyone else now...”  
"Dumbledore doesn’t know anything!" Black screamed, so furious that he startled Hagrid. "He's not here, is he? It's easy, very easy to give orders away, without seeing this... This... Disgrace..." His voice weakened as he looked at James's body on the floor again. "No. Dumbledore is not here, he hasn’t seen it, he's not family. Harry stays with me, Hagrid, or I swear...”  
“Sirius!” Hagrid put his heavy hand in the boy's shoulder as Sirius tried to move forward to get Harry and kept him away, but as gently as he could. “Listen. I understand you. I think you're right. But I trust Dumbledore's word. So until you can deal directly with him, let me do as he says. You know that Dumbledore would never leave Harry in a place where he wasn’t safe.  
Sirius stared at the giant for a moment, losing his strength to argue. He also trusted Dumbledore, but the pain at that moment was so strong he could barely think. He only wanted Harry for himself, in order to protect him, he was his godfather, they were the only thing left for each other.  
“I...”  
"Talk to Dumbledore, Sirius. I'm just taking orders here.”  
They both stared at each other for a few more seconds. Sirius slowly withered, and when he was about to give up arguing, they heard a crack in the front door. They both looked there in time to see Remus staggering at the door, white like a ghost and holding onto the doorway to keep himself from falling.  
Sirius ran to him without thinking, before Remus could come in and see... all that. He pushed him out of the house, but realized something wasn’t right when Remus fell on the lawn with a grunt of pain.  
“R-Remus.” Sirius knelt beside him, watching him stamp a wound that bleed on his chest with his hand. “No, no... What did you ...”  
Remus suddenly pushed him away with his bloody hand and scrambled to his feet. The two stopped, face to face, and Sirius saw Remus pull his wand and point it at him, seeing his face for the first time. Remus was sweating, white, bruised and bloody. He was thin, dirty, and unkampt for as he had never seen before, and Black's brain went round and round.  
They hadn’t seen each other for over a week, but they hadn’t talked for much longer. Things were getting out of control, they were going from bad to worse, the war had entered their minds and they didn’t know if they could trust each other, after all they had heard.  
Thinking about it, Sirius pulled his wand from his pocket and pointed it at Remus as well.  
“You... You did...!” Remus gasped, and pointed briefly at the house in rubble beside him. "You were the secret keeper!"  
"No, Remus.” A knot was formed in Sirius's throat just for the idea of betraying his family that way. "You know I never would..."  
“SO, HOW?!” Lupin shouted back. "You gave them up!"  
“No!” Sirius shouted back. The two stared at each other, the mixture of feelings on their faces making eye contact difficult. Lupin wanted to understand, and Sirius, for his part, couldn’t believe the truth. But at last he replied, "Peter."  
The silence grew even heavier. Remus didn’t digest the information very well. Turning his wand in his hands, hesitant, he grasped it again.  
“What?!”  
"We barter at the last minute, Remus. I thought that would be a good plan. They would come after me, they would think that I was be the secret keeper. I traded so I could lie to protect them all, I could draw them away from them... And because then, maybe, in the end..." Sirius lowered his wand, realizing that it wasn’t worth fighting. Even if Lupin couldn’t be trusted, he had already lost so much that night that if he had to fight the man he loved he would rather die. "You'd realize I was trustworthy. If I really was the traitor I would’ve agreed to be the secret keeper willingly, like..." He swallowed, the pain hitting him again. “Like Peter did.”  
“Merlin.” Remus mumbled when the penny dropped. “Peter...?”  
Sirius nodded, unable to speak.  
“How...?”  
Again, Sirius nodded negatively. He didn’t know. He didn’t know how for a year the traitor was right under their noses and they didn’t notice.  
“It’s my fault.” Sirius whispered. "I... I gave them to him. I k-killed...”  
"No." Remus dropped his wand to the floor and ended the distance between them, holding Sirius tightly against him, holding his face against his chest, his hands on the hairs on the back of his neck. “You didn’t know.”  
“I gave them to him.”  
"No, Sirius.”  
“Yes. I killed them. I killed them..." His voice trailed off, and Sirius now cried, unable to help himself, as he had never cried before, not even with everything his family of blood had caused him to suffer.  
Lupin was trying to fight the pains that consumed him alone, so he also barely knew how to utter a word. He couldn’t believe that two of his best friends were dead now, and that one of them was the cause of it. He couldn’t believe he’d never see them again. He’d never hear their voices again. That all the plans James and Lily made together as a family would never materialize.  
He felt Sirius' hand touch his chest where he bled, and he moaned in pain.  
“What happened to you?”  
“I was in combat. We all heard of it when the Death Eaters began to flee. We heard them talking about what had happened, so I thought about coming here in the same second, but one of them grabbed me, I thought of something else, and...”  
"God, you could’ve lost an arm." He whispered to the other.  
“I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I'm just a little weak.”  
The two of them were silent, hugging each other, together. They missed it so much, and in the face of the night's events, neither of them wanted to waste another second demanding explanations or arguing. They’d have time for that later. They just needed each other, they trusted each other now.  
“Now Harry is alone, and Dumbledore...”  
Lupin pushed Sirius away from him and looked at the house at the sound of Harry's name.  
“Harry!”  
Hagrid was standing at the door of the house, with Harry in his lap wrapped in a blanket.  
"I thought he'd be cold on the trip, so I... I found this blanket..."  
“What trip...?” Lupin looked confused at Sirius, and he wiped his face and recomposed.  
"Dumbledore told Hagrid to take Harry to his uncles in Surrey.”  
“But this is absurd! You're his godfather...”  
“I know.”  
"But Dumbledore ordered-" Hagrid began to speak, but Remus had now lost his temper.  
"Harry cannot be sent to a house where everyone will hate him like this! Has Dumbledore gone mad?!” He looked at Sirius for support, but Sirius was thinking about Peter again, and now regret had given room for anger.  
“I need to find Peter. I need to get him. That rat can’t escape!”  
"You're not thinking straight," Remus chided. “It's a stupid idea. What if... What if Peter got caught? What if he was tortured?”  
Sirius nodded at him ruthlessly. They both knew it was a lie, Sirius had gone through it minutes ago: denial. He had tried to deny what was happening, Pettigrew's betrayal.  
"You know the secret keeper can’t be tortured until he tells, Remus. You know he has to want to tell the secret.”  
Remus was quiet, he knew it very well.  
"Besides, if we don’t get him, I'll be found guilty." He said, and Remus looked at him in alarm. That was true. "No one else knows we've changed papers in the last minute. James and Lily were... The only witnesses.” He shook his head. "I arranged with Peter to meet him tonight to see if he was still fine. I went into the hiding place we combined, he wasn’t there, and there was no sign of fighting. Remus, it was him.” Black's voice broke, and he cleared his throat. "I ran here as soon as I realized, and now I need to find that filthy rat... And..."  
"Sirius, he must be far away already..."  
"But I need to look for him anyway!" Sirius shouted. "I'll go get him, and I don’t care what you say, Remus.” Sirius wielded his wand again. "You go with Hagrid and talk to Dumbledore. We need to be with Harry, we can’t leave him with the muggles.”  
Remus looked at Hagrid, who was determined to take Harry anyway.  
"You know you have to do this. Dumbledore needs to understand. I'll find you as soon as I can. Please trust me," Sirius said, grabbing Remus' shoulders and making him look at him. “Trust me.”  
Not knowing what else to do, Remus agreed. Looking into Sirius's eyes, all he wanted in the world was to trust him and that's what he did. He also knew that if one of them needed to persuade Dumbledore to leave Harry with them, this was Remus.  
“OK.”  
"Try to get him back to Hogwarts, okay? Just for tonight. Let's solve this. I'll find you.” Sirius put both hands on Remus's face now, and pulled him to him by pressing his forehead against his. “I’ll see you soon.”  
"Okay." That was all he could answer.  
"Here it is, Sirius." Hagrid handed him a piece of paper containing the muggle address in Surrey. “In case you need to find us.”  
Sirius put the piece of paper in his pocket and looked one last time at Harry and the Potter house before he disapparated.  


~*~

  
The rest of that Halloween night passed like smudges. Sirius knew there was no hope of finding the traitor, but he wasn’t ready to stop looking. The guilt corroded him, he handed his best friend's family to Voldemort's ally and they were now dead. If he stopped now, if he sat down and thought about it, he would fall apart. He could’t think of stopping to move, to look for Peter, the anger he felt could make him search every corner and every manhole in this world, in the midst of every disgusting rat, if it were possible. But as the hours passed and he had no idea where to look, beginning to accept the idea that Peter was already far away at this time, he was forced to give up his quest, for the time being. Remus needed him, Harry too. He owed the rest of his life to James and Lily, but he promised, before apparating to Surrey, that he wouldn’t rest until he’d killed Pettigrew with his own hands.  


~*~

  
Remus was sitting in an armchair in the corner of Dumbledore's office, too tired to even sleep. His mind wouldn’t stop working, and every second it was harder to go through with the pain of the loss of the Potters and not knowing where Sirius was.  
He managed, with great difficulty, to convince Dumbledore to give them one day to talk about Harry's fate. He told him about Sirius and the sudden decision to make Peter the keeper of the secret, and begged the headmaster to give them a chance to prove they were telling the truth. Now, every minute that passed without Sirius arriving, Remus felt the apprehension grow in his chest as he saw Dumbledore's expression of disbelief grow worse. He knew the headmaster thought Sirius had fled, but he didn’t know Sirius like Remus did.  
I mean... He saw how Sirius was. He cried on Remus’ shoulder! And though in recent months their relationship had been shaken with lack of confidence, Remus trusted him, didn’t he?  
But it was getting harder and harder to resist the doubt that hit him every second that Sirius didn’t arrive. Every moment it made more sense that Sirius had made a scene and told lies about Peter and fled to save his skin, as Remus had seen the other Death Eaters do earlier that night. And he didn’t want to, but it was getting harder and harder to get those ideas out of his mind, especially with Dumbledore's gaze on him, waiting silently for hours in that office.  
Madam Pomfrey had already efficiently cured Remus' wounds, and he’d taken a potion to calm the nerves. With protests from Remus, Dumbledore asked Pomfrey to take Harry to sleep in the hospital wing, where it was calmer. And since then they were both waiting in the silence of the night for a miracle that Remus longed for with all the strength of his being; He could imagine his whole life from the moment Sirius Black passed or didn’t pass through that door. And the second alternative was very painful compared to the first, where he could see himself one day maybe even being happy again.  
Come on, Sirius. Please. I trust you. I trust you.  
Dumbledore could impose himself any moment to put an end to that wait and take Harry away from them forever. And that moment was getting closer and closer. If Sirius didn’t show up right now...  
"How..." Remus cleared his throat, forcing his voice out. “Sir. Um, if Sirius is telling the truth, and if he can’t find Peter... How can he prove it? No one but them were there... There are no living witnesses.”  
Dumbledore calmly reached for a drawer behind his desk and took something out of it. He placed a bottle of potion on the table in front of Remus, where on a small label was written "Veritaserum".  
"I want it to be clear, Remus, that the only reason I've agreed to wait for Sirius with you was trust. I watched you grow up, watched James and Sirius become so close they looked like brothers. I watched Black fight with all his might against the dark arts, and I trust him. I confess that though all odds are against him, I don’t want to believe that Black would have betrayed his best friends by the arts of darkness. But I cannot wait forever.”  
Trembling, Remus nodded. He’d never felt so lonely and vulnerable in his life. He could fall down in tears in front of Albus Dumbledore right now, but he was trying to be strong. He knew he’d have no chance to convince anyone to let him create The Boy Who Lived alone, especially being the monster he was.  
The silence continued for another minute, as the desperation in Remus' mind grew and grew, and when he thought he couldn’t hold it anymore and he would get up and start screaming, the door opened with a crash and Sirius Black burst through it, stunned and panting, as if he'd been running a marathon. As soon as he laid eyes on both of them, he came to them.  
“Let's finish this.”  
Remus could’t be more relieved. He’d come back, and now Lupin knew he could trust him, and he embraced the sense of shame that he had doubted Sirius as a good friend, for it was good to be ashamed to be wrong at that moment. He could’t help the more relieved sigh he had ever let go when he saw Sirius Black standing behind his chair, knowing that meant he was no longer alone in this - and if everything went right, he’d never be alone again.  
"Sirius, please, sit down." Dumbledore conjured up a chair next to Remus's, and the dark haired boy sat down, watching the vial of the potion on the table in front of him and already understanding everything. "Of course the rest of the Order who knew about the plan to hide the Potters imagined that because of your closeness to James, you'd be the secret keeper. But the only living people who actually knew you’d be the keeper are me and Remus, so I believe we are the two people who deserve to know the truth so that your innocence is attested, and we are both here. So if you accept, of course, I suggest you take the potion of truth and tell us what actually happened to the Fidelius spell.”  
Sirius readily nodded. He took the bottle from the table and, taking off the cork, took two large sips. He dropped it on the table again and leaned his back against the chair, holding its arms in his hands. Dumbledore watched him for a few seconds, then asked:  
“Who are you?”  
“My name is Sirius Orion Black. I am the eldest son of Orion and Walburga Black, and brother of Regulus Black.”  
“Were you the keeper to the Potters secret?”  
“No.”  
“Who was?”  
“Peter Pettigrew. We changed places at the last minute, at my own suggestion. I thought it was the perfect bluff, for everyone would suspect me, and I could draw them away from my friends and prove my loyalty to the Order. Peter confided to me as a second guardian the Potters secret the very night we cast the spell, as it was expected of him, as the Potters wanted me to be able to find their home in Godric's Hollow whenever I needed to.”  
Remus wanted to hold Sirius's hand. He knew that the Veritaserum potion made words come out of his mouth without stopping, without you being able to choose or even think, and that it was so painful for Sirius to hear himself talking about James and Lily at that moment as it was for him.  
"What happened tonight, when you found out about their deaths?"  
"I had arranged to meet Peter tonight, a week after the spell, in the hiding place where we arranged in an abandoned house on the second back street of the Order's headquarters, to see if he was still doing fine. I went there at the agreed time and I didn’t find it, and I found no sign of fighting. At the same moment I was nervous and ran to the Potters house. When I got there I found them dead and Hagrid was catching Harry. Then I tried to find Peter, but he had already run away.”  
"Do you know if there's any way to find Peter? Is there somewhere he'd go to hide?”  
Remus looked at Sirius, feeling suddenly nervous.  
"Sir..." He started to speak, but as a result of the potion, Sirius started to speak before him.  
“Peter Pettigrew is an Animagus, who can take the form of a mouse.”  
Remus saw the surprise pass through Dumbledore's face, who stared at him.  
“How did this happen?”  
Remus opened his mouth again, but again Sirius bent to speak:  
"Peter, James, and I became illegally animagi during our stay at Hogwarts to accompany Remus in his transformations. I take the shape of a dog, and James turned into a deer.”  
Lupin put a hand to his face, grimacing. Sirius might be getting rid of a false accusation, but he ended up delivering them all unintentionally on the way. If James was watching that, he would surely be laughing far beyond the grave.  
"I see..." Dumbledore stared at them for countless seconds, his blue eyes seeming to scrutinize people's souls. "That certainly makes the picture worse. It will be a thousand times harder to find Pettigrew in the form of a mouse now. And it would certainly aggravate the picture for you too, Mr. Black, if being an Animagus was not a good advantage to a member of the Order of the Phoenix.  
"Sir..." Remus said. "Do you still think we're going to need the Order?"  
"Maybe not at the moment, Mr. Lupin. But surely we should not exclude that possibility, don’t you think?” He stared at him over the half moon shaped glasses. Remus didn’t know what to say.  
"Voldemort isn’t gone forever. He’ll do anything to return, and when he does, we must be ready.” It was Sirius who spoke, in a tone still robotic, but slightly bitter.  
"You're right, Mr. Black. I am grateful that we have this certainty, because it’ll be necessary for what I have to tell you.”  
"That's why I want to be with Harry. Remus will help me protect him with our lives. That's what his parents would like to happen.”  
Dumbledore was quiet for a while longer. Then he got up and started walking around the office, making the two men sitting follow him with their eyes.  
"I understand that as his godfather, legally the decision is yours now, Sirius. And I understand that I cannot and should not go over the law in these circumstances. I firmly believe you two would take care of Harry better than the Dursleys, though I have my doubts about Harry's creation within the wizarding world. You see," He glanced briefly at them. “Harry Potter will be an extremely famous boy. There won’t be a wizard who won’t know his name in our world.”  
Remus nodded. It was still difficult for him to try to see the situation in the long run, but Dumbledore was right about it.  
"But I need to warn you about some things before you make your decision, and I hope you understand me well."  
“There is no decision to make, he stays with us...!”  
“Sirius, listen.” Remus put a hand over the boy's hand at his side, holding it tight. They looked at each other, and Remus nodded at him as if trying to calm him down. “Just listen.”  
They both looked back at Dumbledore, who had stood by the window and stared at the distant lands, the new moon shining in the sky that slowly began to prepare to receive the first rays of sunlight.  
"There are many things about this night that I can’t understand, just like everyone else. But some things were clear to me immediately. I hope you understand that what I will tell you tonight must remain just between the three of us.”  
“Of course.” Remus nodded.  
"It was Lily's sacrifice that saved Harry tonight. When she stood in front of Harry to protect him, ready to give up her life for him, a much older and much stronger charm than anything Voldemort could’ve understood acted as shield between Harry and Voldemort, this way causing his spell against the boy to ricochet.”  
Remus was shocked. Even without realizing it, he was still squeezing Sirius's hand with his, the emotion he felt almost crushing him inside. Lily had no idea how brave, talented and strong she was. God, he'd missed her so much!  
"As long as he’s protected from this spell, Voldemort will never be able to touch Harry Potter. He will only be protected while under his mother's protection, and as we all know, Lily Potter is unfortunately no longer here to protect him.”  
The two boys swallowed.  
"So the only other person who can protect Harry Potter like Lily did is someone who shares her blood.” Dumbledore turned to them, still standing by the window. "And the only living person who shares Lily's blood is Petunia, her sister. If he is raised in the same house as her, he will be protected from any invesment from Lord Voldemort while she’s responsible for him. Now, as you said, Mr. Black, we know he can’t simply have died. Staying with you, Harry Potter’s safety take much more risks than staying with his uncles, even if he was raised in an environment far from the wizarding world and far from his legal guardian.  
Remus and Sirius stared at each other. That was too much to digest like that, so suddent. They looked back at Dumbledore, and he approached a few steps.  
"I fear that the longer Harry stays away from his mother's bloodline, the more vulnerable he is to lose the protection of the spell, that’s why I've asked Hagrid to remove him from the house and take him immediately to the Dursleys. This way, I'm sorry to report that you need to make a decision right away, for Harry.”  
The two weren’t ready at all for this revelation.  
"I'll give you a moment, and I'll go to the hospital wing to see how Harry is. Please, make yourself at home.” Dumbledore said, leaving his office and closing the door on the way.  


~*~

  
Remus turned to Sirius.  
“Are you alright?”  
The dark haired man nodded, leaning back in his chair. He ran his hand through his hair, tossing it back in a clear sign of nervousness, and took a deep breath.  
"What do we do now, Remus? This child... Harry, a child, the child of our best friends, is in our hands. Under our protection. I don’t ... I don’t know if I can do this, I don’t know if I can protect him. I mean, we're a basket case and a werewolf responsible for a child. And now we need to decide between taking care of him or dropping him off in a strange home with detestable people because of such a super old and powerful charm?! I don’t know what to do!”  
"Okay." Remus raised his hands, trying to sort out his own thoughts first. He knew that it was all comming straight from Sirius's mind because of the potion he’d taken. “Okay. I think the solution is to do what James and Lily would want.”  
"But maybe they wouldn’t want what's right! I mean, do you think they ever thought about the real possibility of leaving their kid with an idiot like me?!”  
"Of course, Sirius! They chose you as his godfather, remember?! They chose you with all certainty of this world. And we were in the middle of a war! Do you think they didn’t think of that possibility?”  
"Not seriously. James wouldn’t want to leave his son in the hands of a guy like me.”  
"Merlin, Padfoot." Remus stood up and stood in front of Sirius's chair, bending down and holding the boy’s face. “You’re being crazy. Did you forget how much they loved you? Of course they knew you knew how to take good care of Harry. Lily and James wouldn’t want him to grow up in a muggle family without knowing who he is. They wanted Harry to grow up with you, knowing who we are, who we were, what they did for him. We owe it to them, Sirius. We owe James and Lily, to give our lives to protect Harry. And we can do it better than some muggles who have no idea what's going on. You know it.” Remus squeezed Sirius' face with his hands. - You know. And you can.  
Sirius stared at Remus' face and thought quietly for long seconds before he shook his head.  
"I can’t do this alone. I need you. If we do that, we'll do it together. I can’t without you.”  
Lupin pulled Sirius's face to him and kissed him, somehow catching them both by surprise. Sirius blinked a few times as they parted.  
"Of course I'm going to be with you, you inconsequent fool.”  
Black held the boy's wrists in front of him, pulling his hands from his face slowly. He held them up on his lap and looked at their hands together for a moment.  
"What's going on here with you? I mean, I thought you were the one who was worried about having to take care of a child being a werewolf, and I would be the reckless one who supports the absurd idea.”  
"That can only mean that this is the right thing to do, since I'm always right." Remus tried to make fun, and they both laughed softly for a moment.  
“I owe you an apology. For everything, for the last months...”  
“It's all right.”  
"No, it's not all right.” Sirius shook his head. "I suspected you. I let the war into my head. I let what they said make me see you different...”  
"I gave you reason to believe that."  
"It doesn’t justify it, Remus. I'll never mistrust you again. I promise.”  
"Okay." Lupin nodded and met his eyes. “Okay. We're fine. Right?”  
“I'm not fine. And I think it'll take me a while to be.”  
Remus put a hand on his arm, comforting him.  
“Ah. Wow. I think I still have veritaserum running in my veins.”  
“Certainly. Sirius Black showing weakness?” Lupin smiled weakly. “But lets test it. How do I look?” He nodded to his own face.  
“Like trash.” Sirius answered before he could think, then pressed his lips into a grimace. Remus laughed. "But still hot."  
Both of them laughed softly, allowing themselves to do this again for once.  
They both exchanged a minute of silence holding hands as they both tried to get used to the idea that everything would be different now. Then Sirius took a deep breath and stood up, pulling Remus with him as they went to the door.

They walked through the corridors of the school to the hospital wing, both realizing how much they missed that place. It was very early, everything was quiet, and no one was awake, not even Filch. Sirius thought of his first day at Hogwarts, probably one of the happiest memories he had, and then decided that he would make Harry's first day there one of his happiest, too. It was then that he realized that they were making the right choice. He wouldn’t let anyone who couldn’t explain exactly how important his parents were raise Harry.  
They arrived at the hospital wing and Dumbledore was accompanied with Madame Pomfrey and Professor McGonagall beside a bed that had been transfigured into a beautiful and comfortable crib. They approached and saw Harry inside it, sleeping soundly.  
“He’s hurt.” Remus frowned, seeing the bandage on the little boy's forehead. It was unusual for a wizard to receive bandages from external wounds, usually they were treated and the cut healed almost immediately, and Remus was well aware that Madame Pomfrey was great at healing. “Is it too deep?” He looked at the woman beside him, then at Dumbledore.  
Madame Pomfrey carefully removed the dressing from above the boy's forehead, which was a little red and swollen at the scar. It had the exact shape of a lightning, and although already healed, it was very clear and red.  
"I don’t think it's going to disappear."  
“How did he...?”  
"Weren’t it caused by the wreckage?" Sirius asked too.  
"No," Dumbledore replied. "Hagrid said he was like this when he saw him in the untouched room. This scar was created by Voldemort.”  
Everyone looked at the little boy in the crib again, Remus a little shocked.  
“Merlin.”  
"Will he be all right?"  
“Ah yes. Pompona has already taken care of the wound, he doesn’t feel it anymore. Now it's just a scar... Maybe the most famous scar in our world.”


	2. 0. A new beginning - pt. 2

Remus and Sirius didn’t have to think hard to decide that they would go to the house where Lupin grew up. It was their parent’s old house, in a small, almost rural village on the outskirts of London. They were practically just muggles, and although it was considered rather bad for them previously to be too remote and in a place too full of muggles, it was perfect now.  
Their first decision about Harry's life was this: he'd grow up far from too many wizards and the madness around his name and the fame he already carried on his shoulders, at least until Hogwarts started. For that reason, the idea of living in Godric's Hollow in the Potter’s house had been discarded even before it was mentioned, even if they knew it was a possibility, because James and Lily would certainly have no problem leaving the house to them. It was simply too painful. The idea of living and raising the boy where his parents died for him, not to mention that, as far as they knew, not one day had passed and wizards from all over the country had already traveled there to pay their homage, and apparently they were building a statue as well.  
The Lupin’s cottage was practically abandoned with all the Order missions and full moons, and with the madness that his life had turned to during the war he hadn’t been there for more than a month, but a wave of wand was enough to put everything in place and take some of the dust out. It was a small place, but nice and comfortable, and they were sure going to get used to living there. Sirius would probably have the hardest time, since he was accustomed to the mess, tumult, and big cities, but this was a choice he made.  
The first few days passed like a blurred dream. The Order helped a lot with James and Lily's funeral, and the mourning and pain were still so recent that they just couldn’t fall into a routine There was so much to do, small renovations in the house, arrangements for things that were not yet finalized in the Order... There were always people from the Order leaving and entering the house, visiting, leaving the condolences, checking on Harry or even meeting him for the first time... Because of this turmoil, they barely felt time passing by and by the time they did they were already falling asleep over an unfinished meal or putting dirty diapers inside the refrigerator by mistake.  
But as the days went by, and as things calmed down and they were having more time alone, unlike what they expected, things didn’t get any easier. Harry was crying a lot more, because now there was no one to hold him and entertain him the whole time, and it was clear he had begun to miss his parents more. He still didn’t say a word other than ‘ma-ma-ma’ which usually meant he was hungry, but after a while Remus realized that he actually wanted Lily.  
It was so hard, especially because, it wasn’t the poor little boy's fault, but everything about him reminded them so much of his parents. Sirius cried in the shower, and Remus sometimes felt uncontrollable urges to leave the house and walk through a forest for hours, as if the monster inside him was also suffering.  
The first week passed that way. As he ate, Remus noticed that Sirius was actually scratching every day off on the calendar that was hanging on the refrigerator door, as a way to count one more day that they survived. Remus thought he was joking when Sirius told him what he was doing before they fell asleep last night.  
After Remus finished eating, he got up from the bench on the small kitchen counter and went to the sink to wash the dish. He only realized that Harry had been crying for a long time in the living room when the noise stopped and he realised that he had become accustomed to the noise. He heard Sirius sigh in relief and smiled minimally, wiping his hands on a cloth before going into the living room that was separated from the kitchen by only a small wall.  
"Oh, it sounds like you did it, Pads... You see, it's not that diffi-“  
Remus's eyes widened as he watched Sirius put his wand in his pants pocket and walked over to them.  
"Did you silence him?"  
"Oh, come on, it’s not hurting him!" Sirius defended himself when he saw Remus's look of judgment, and saw him take Harry from his arms and undo the spell with a wave of his wand. The boy started crying even louder, and Sirius put his hands to his head, circling the room as he tried to control himself. It seemed he was going crazy.  
"You do not enchant a child for them to stop crying, Sirius!"  
"I just wanted two minutes of silence!" Sirius almost screamed back over Harry's loud cry; It was impossible to talk to him normally like that. "He hasn’t stopped for hours, Remus, I can’t hear my own thoughts anymore, I think I'm going crazy..." He whimpered, running his hands over his face.  
Remus held Harry tightly against him and began to swing his body back and forth, hoping that that would help.  
"I don’t think I can do this, we didn’t think about it at all... Maybe we should’ve left him with the Dursleys, they already have a child, they would know better..."  
“Sirius, please.” Remus closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on calming Harry, stroking his back. "Shhh, all right, Harry, you just need to sleep... Have you fed him yet? Is his diaper changed? Did you give him water?”  
"I've done it all twice!" Sirius stopped in front of them and folded his arms, a wrinkle of worry and despair between his eyebrows. Lupin opened his eyes and stared at him. It was already hard to calm a child, now he had to calm two. “Maybe we made the wrong choice. Maybe we don’t know how to do this.”  
"Pads..." Remus shook his head, still stroking Harry's back as he slowly began to get tired of crying. "We knew it wouldn’t be easy. But we'll find a way, okay? We're in this together. OK? I'm with you.” He reached out and touched the man's shoulder, down his arm and squeezed his hand at the end. “OK? Calm down. Let's do this together.”  
Sirius sighed deeply and nodded.  
“He just misses Lily. It is as new and difficult for him as it is for us. Right, little man?” Remus looked down to Harry’s red and tired face. “We miss her too. We really do.”  
Harry was overcome by fatigue in the middle of the night, and it was the same for the next nights for at least two weeks. After days he finally began to get used to the new routine and to fall asleep faster, without crying so much for his mother's absence whenever he got tired. In time, the three of them got the hang of it, slowly, and it all got easier.

≈

A year later, the difficulties were different. There was still more and more trouble in the job of raising the boy, but now they both understood better that it was part of raising any child. Harry was great, he really was an incredible child, and Sirius and Remus loved him so much. But the boy was honestly a pain in the ass when it came to taking a shower.  
“He just hates it.” Sirius complained as he unbuttoned the white shirt he was wearing in front of the bedroom mirror, talking to Remus's reflection that he was not so sure was hearing him, since he was staring at the book he had been reading for days. "I swear, bathing in him is a nightmare. I wish I didn’t have to do it every day. Maybe if he didn’t play so much during the day and got all sweaty and dirty, we could do that once a week.”  
Remus murmured something that might be an agreement or disagreement. Sirius continued.  
“He throws water everywhere. Messes up the walls. Wets the window, throws water outside. He soaks the toilet, the sink, and floods the bathroom.” He said as he took off his shirt and tossed it into an armchair in the corner of the room. He sat on the edge of the bed and began to take off his shoes. "And the shampoo, Merlin the shampoo, it’s the hardest part. I mean, washing his hair is simply impossible unless you agree to spend half an hour making funny hairstyles and bearding foam on it.” He dropped his shoes in a corner and began unbuttoning his pants. "And he only agrees to wash in the shower if you let him clean himself, and of course it doesn’t go well."  
Sirius pulled a pair of old sweatpants and an old T-shirt from the closet and put them on, facing Remus. He watched him lower the book and pick up his wand from the dresser, waving it and making the white shirt he tossed onto the chair go land the laundry basket in the bathroom.  
"And how come the child hasn’t discovered yet that he needs to close his eyes before washing his face? I mean, Merlin, it's not difficult! Of course your eyes will sting if you don’t close them, but does he listen? No. When you put him in a bathtub full of water he forgets the world around him.”  
Remus laughed softly. He watched Sirius walk into the bedroom bathroom and pick up his toothpaste and toothbrush, but that didn’t stop him from continuing talking.  
“And when he's finally clean and you think it's over, there goes the kid slipping out of the tub and running naked on the wet floor, leaving marks all over the house, and then you blame me... Thank God he doesn’t know how the bathroom door key works, because you can’t leave it open while he's there.”  
Sirius was silent as he rinsed his mouth and then left the bathroom, turning off the light and going to bed.  
"What I’m trying to say, honestly, is that I’ll do whatever you want for a week if you give me some time off for a while," he said as he crawled into his side of the bed and pulled the duvet underneath. Remus dropped the book on the dresser with his wand and looked at him, his eyebrow arched. “We have three weeks before the full moon, you have no excuse. I'm warning you from now on, I'm on strike. I will not bathe the kid until he turns five.”  
Remus laughed and cupped Sirius' cheek.  
"But you look so cute when he makes you look like a wet dog."  
Sirius rolled his eyes.  
"Your jokes, of course. They’re the best part of bathing Harry, for sure.”  
Remus laughed and Sirius followed him. They exchanged a quick kiss before Remus turned and turned off the light, and then set the pillow down for bed.  
“We can discuss that. I'll need some time to choose my conditions, of course.” Sirius laughed and pinched him lightly, and he pushed him away. "But only if you behave."  
They both laughed again, before Black also settled down to sleep.

≈

When the responsibility of raising Harry was given to Sirius and Remus, it was Remus who initially saw it as a good thing, while Sirius was slightly freaking out and worrying that he would screw Harry up. The pain of James and Lily’s death still hung over them, and the first weeks were hard for Sirius personally, because besides being in mourning he found himself missing James and simultaneously blaming himself for trusting Peter with the secret every time he looked at Harry. He didn’t know how to raise a child, he wasn’t ready or prepared for it, and it scared the hell out of him, until one night when Remus was out for an Order meeting and he had to find a way to calm Harry down after several hours of constant crying. He ended up staying up late that night beside Harry’s crib telling him stories about the Marauders, while Harry looked at him as if he understood every single word – and even smiling at him sometimes.  
Remus had his doubts about raising Harry too, but they came a long time after the Potter’s death, when the little boy was almost three years old. His transformations at the full moon were always difficult, but they were worse during that year. For some reason the beast inside him was more violent, he hurt himself too much, spent weeks recovering only to have to repeat everything a month later. His disposition was worse, he couldn’t help Sirius at all and so Sirius would end up getting as tired as him.  
Harry was growing up too fast. It took him a while to start talking, but as soon as he started he didn’t stop anymore. He asked questions about everything, wanted to know about absolutely everything, and they still didn’t know how to deal with some things with Harry, what to tell or not to tell.  
It was during a particularly terrible month that Remus felt he almost lost his mind. The approaching phenomena known as The Red Moon was definitely making things worse for Lupin. The week before the full moon made him even more unstable and his emotions harder to control. He could feel his animal side closer to him than in many previous months, and it was making him paranoid. He didn’t want to get close to Harry for fear of hurting him, and started to ask himself if the decision of becoming a part of the boy’s life was a mistake. Any minor detail, even physical like the scent of Sirius, annoyed him. It was like an animal recognizing another animal that was trying to take its space, and he didn’t know how to handle it.  
The night before the full moon, Remus and Sirius broke into a fight. He knew it was his fault, but he couldn’t stop the explosion of rage inside him. He screamed at Sirius for something he’d said, waking Harry up and making Sirius retaliate by physically confronting him. Unable to control himself, he roughly shoved Sirius away causing him to lose his balance and fall to the ground. This only angered Sirius further and Remus was suddenly tackled by Padfoot. Padfoot’s furious barks at him almost made Remus understand the words he was trying to say from behind the noise. Harry cried from his bedroom, now scared by the fighting. Remus, with a mixture of irritation and fear at himself, could only grab his wand and run out of the house. He ran towards any place where he could spend the night away from home, and guiltily he thought of running away for good. The memory of Harry’s cry of fear, of Sirius’s anger, and of the disgust at the animal within himself, all made him think that he should run as far as he could from the people he loved so he couldn’t hurt them.  
The transformation that night had been the worst he’d had since the war. He knew it was a big threat to be anywhere close to another human being, and didn’t knowing where else to run, so he apparated to Hogsmeade and ran to the Shrieking Shack, desperate to find a familiar place where he felt safe to transform without hurting anyone. While there, he conjured up iron ties strong enough to hold him and tied himself to them, with all the strength he had, and waited for the transformation.  
The pain was excruciating. Every bit of his body seemed to disintegrate, break into a thousand pieces, and then join again. The rage inside the beast was so strong that the cuffs barely held him, and to redirect the anger he dug deep wounds into himself, on his chest, shoulders and back. The night seemed to last forever, and with the end of it came the other terrible part: the pain of the wounds, the regret for how he treated his family and the repulsiveness of being a threat to the people he loved the most.  
The moon had already disappeared from the sky, but the sun was barely risen and everything was still dark. Remus was too hurt to push himself or to walk too much alone, and he had no one to help him or give him the care he needed. He picked up his wand from the floor, untied himself and stood up, and wished with all his strength not to splinch himself as he focused on his house and disapparated, falling a second later on the stairs in front of home.  
He entered the house trying not to make any noise and found everything the way he had left the night before. He needed to take care of his wounds immediately, because he was bleeding a lot, but not until he was sure Sirius and Harry were there and that they were fine. He went to the small room first, and found the two he was looking for. Harry was sleeping in his crib and Sirius was sitting in a chair beside him, sleeping with his head resting on the side of the crib holding the baby’s hand.  
Remus sighed, relieved. Both were fine. He pulled an old blanket from inside Harry’s dresser and placed it carefully over Sirius before leaving the room, limping to the bathroom in the double room.  
He filled the tub with warm water and stepped inside it, making a tremendous effort so that his moans of pain wouldn’t wake the two, seeing the water turn red almost automatically because of the blood. From the little that he could see on his chest and shoulders the cuts were deep, but they weren’t deep enough to reach anything vital. He knew he needed to heal those wounds as soon as possible, but the pain of closing wounds was terrible and he wasn’t eager to do so.  
Remus gave way to exhaustion and closed his eyes for just one second, tilting his head back. He woke up in a jump, having no idea how much time had passed, with Sirius holding his face and shaking his head.  
“Remus!”  
Lupin moaned, the pain and confusion taking over himself as he blinked a few times.  
“God, Remus… Oh my god you berk, where were you!” Sirius exclaimed, bending down into the tub and hugging Remus briefly against him. “Thank God, you- Merlin.” He watched Remus’ closely as he pulled away. “You’re lying in a tub of blood, Lupin! You have to heal your wounds, why didn’t you call me!” Sirius’ voice was distressed and full of concern.  
Remus was dizzy. He looked at the water that was completely red around him and realized that he had blacked out for longer than he had thought. He watched Sirius quickly search for something inside the bathroom closet and come back to him with a bottle of a clean-wounds potion he always used in his cuts. He pulled Remus’ body up and made him sit down, and before Lupin could say anything he began to drip on the wounds on his shoulders making Remus scream with the pain and the deep sting.  
“Shh… Shh, it’s okay, it’s almost done. Just a little more…” Black continued dripping, and Lupin put a hand to his mouth to bite it and keep himself from making too much noise, while his other hand clutched the edge of the tub with all his strength.  
The cuts that were closing slowly stopped burning, and after a few minutes of torture he began to feel better. When Sirius was finally done, Remus could lie down again and try to catch his breath from the pain.  
He watched as Sirius put away the potion and took out his wand, wiping the blood from the water and making it clean again with a murmured charm.  
“Sirius…” Remus called, reaching out for him.  
“Not now. Stay quiet.” Sirius went back to look for something in the closet. He took out two more bottles of potions and went back to Remus. He opened one that was served with a dropper and held Remus’s face up to his chin. “Open your mouth.”  
“What is…”  
“Replacing Blood.” He answered, already dripping three drops into Remus’ mouth. It had a very strong taste of iron, which clung to his tongue making him grimace. He watched as Sirius closed the bottle and opened the other, filling the lid with some of the dark green liquid.  
“Where did these things come from?”  
“Just take it, okay? It’ll make you feel better” Sirius muttered, and gave him that potion too.  
That one he knew, it was Wiggenweld, a potion that reinvigorates those who drink it. He took it every month at Hogwarts in the hospital wing, served by Madame Pomfrey. Remus looked down at himself and ran his hands slowly over the cuts. It still hurt, but they were healed. A few hours of rest and he’d feel better. He looked back at Sirius, who was kneeling beside the tub and finishing storing the potions. Remus shook his head him, the mixture of guilt and regret almost consuming him inside.  
“I don’t deserve you.”  
“Be quiet, Lupin.”  
“I don’t deserve you.” He said again. "After what I did yesterday. Every month, every time… You deserve someone better. I don’t know how you’re still with me, and…”  
"I told you to shut up.” Sirius took a deep breath, stepping closer to him and pulling him carefully closer to him. The chest of his T-shirt was already soaked, but he held Remus’s face against his chest and brushed the sweaty hair from his forehead, kissing the top of his head and holding him. “You scared the hell out of me. Do not do that again.”  
"I almost left.” Lupin admitted. “I almost did. I thought about going as far as possible and not coming back. I don’t want to hurt you and Harry. You can do this without me, but…“ He swallowed. "I can’t do it without you.When I came home and saw you with Harry in the bedroom, I realized. I wouldn’t have the courage to leave you.”  
Sirius pulled away and cupped Lupin’s face, making Remus look at him.  
"And you’re not going, do you understand me? If you leave, I swear I’ll curse you forever. I swear, Remus Lupin. You’re not going anywhere, I won’t let you.”  
Sirius kissed him, and Remus let him do it. Then the two of them hugged each other again. Remus knew it was true. He really wouldn’t go anywhere.

≈

On Harry's third birthday, the first person to arrive as always was Hagrid. He would visit them at least once a month, and after a while Remus and Sirius realized that this must be the way Dumbledore kept an eye on how Harry was doing. But they didn’t care, for it was clear that Hagrid truly adored Harry; he always brought gifts, usually things that he himself made in his hut and that were useless, but Harry kept in his room anyway along with all his other toys. Harry didn’t cry when he met the gigantic man who at first glance might seem a bit scary. On the contrary he got along well with Hagrid immediately, as if he knew he had already met him, which was incredible.  
For that birthday they invited some kids from the neighborhood who got along with Harry, and his parents, and only a few Order people, like Hagrid, Moody (who claimed to be too busy to go but they knew it was because Moody didn’t want to be in a house full of children), Quim and McGonagall. Each guest brought a dish, they set up a table with a banner and Hagrid placed his cake in the middle of it. Sirius placed the three candles in the middle of the frosting and they prepared to sing the congratulations soon, since all the children wanted to do was to eat and play.  
As Hagrid brought a knife from the kitchen, Remus and Sirius argued quietly behind the table about who would hold Harry and who would blow the candles.  
"You hold him and I’ll blow it."  
"He can blow the candles by himself, he's three!" Remus shook his head at Sirius. "I’ll hold him, and he blows."  
"No, Remus, hold him, I'll blow the candles, okay?"  
Remus narrowed his eyes at Sirius, who blinked a few times.  
"What did you do with those candles?"  
“Nothing. I didn’t even touch the candles. I did absolutely nothing.”  
“Sirius ... There are muggles here.”  
“I did nothing!” He whispered back. "But if I tell you to hide, you should probably hide."  
“Sirius...!” Remus snapped, but Hagrid appeared.  
"Here it is." Hagrid handed the knife to Sirius, and Sirius handed Harry over to Remus. The two exchanged a look that Sirius would consider a murderous one from Remus, but he didn’t care. The three of them stood behind the cake and Hagrid began the celebration by belting out “Happy Birthday” and clapping deafeningly. As they sang, Black lit the three candles carefully with that strange thing the muggles called a lighter.  
Remus was tense, he didn’t know what kind of craziness Sirius could do and judging by how he well knew Black they could end the day having to obliviate half a dozen people. At the end of the song the children yelled and everyone clapped, and Sirius blew the three candles at the same time making them explode in glitter and confetti that flew to the ceiling and fell on them all in slow motion, changing colors, causing the children to yell more and begin to jump to pick up the shiny pieces that, when touching their skins, disappeared.  
Black looked at Remus with a smirk and he rolled his eyes but laughed weakly.  
"Did you think I was going to blow something up?"  
"You did blow something up. But it was the right way, congratulations.” Remus smiled and kissed Sirius' face, and Harry jumped into Sirius' neck and hugged him.  
“More sparks!”  
"There's no more sparks, prongslet!" Sirius laughed and held him in his arms.  
"Get closer, let's take a picture of you three." Quim said, standing up and picking up the camera.  
The three got closer, and Sirius exchanged a quick look with Remus. They both then kissed the boy's cheek at the same time, making Harry laugh, and the flash exploded in them indicating that the photo had been taken.  
"Wow, Mom, look at that weird camera!" One of Harry's little friends pointed to Quim's camera, where a bit of smoke came from the flash. The photo was printed a few seconds later and Remus was already there to pick it up and prevent any of the muggles from seeing it moving. He understood a little more about muggles than the other wizards there, so he was trying to keep the appearances. He looked at the little boy and his mother and smiled.  
“It's a very old camera.” He explained.  
During the rest of the afternoon everyone ate a lot and the kids played and ran until dusk. Hagrid, Quim and McGonagall sat at the kitchen counter, talking and drinking butterbeer for a long time, always with Sirius or Remus keeping them company while the other was taking care of the children and talking to the other parents. Soon the muggles left, but some left their children to play some more with the promise that Remus would take them home later.  
"It's still hard to make him understand that we can’t show others that we can do magic." Remus said, sitting by the candy table with the other wizards now, while they kept an eye on Sirius and the children playing with legos in the living room. "That's why we avoid doing too much magic around him, we just do the basics, like the food and that sort of thing. We’re waiting for him to get older so we can explain that he is different from the other children.”  
"Have you ever seen magic come out of him?"  
“Not yet.” Remus took another sip of his beer. “But Sirius said he made soap bubbles come out of the tub the other day in the shower. He said there were too many for it to be just coincidence." He laughed.  
"The boy will be a terrific wizard if he inherits the talents of his parents." Quim commented. “Lily was extremely good at magic, and James was great too. The things that boy invented, the plans he drew, he always surprised me. He knew how to think in an unconventional way, as most of us cannot. He knew how to use magic in different ways. He was a true genius.”  
"Yeah, I remember that when they were at Hogwarts I recognized Potter's ability very early. And Black, too. You were always the most studious, very smart, Remus." McGonagall nodded at him. "But Black and Potter were special geniuses, those little pranksters knew things that most of us didn’t expect from such young students.”  
Remus laughed and nodded. If she only knew half of the things they did...  
“Little pranksters?” Sirius stepped behind her chair, going to the refrigerator to get a bottle of water. Then he returned to McGonagall and put his arms around her shoulders. "You can only be talking about me, right, Minnie?"  
McGonagall looked up, staring at him with a serious but amused expression.  
"I have already paid for my sins with you. Now I wonder how the Potter boy is going to be... If he’ll give me half of the amount of work you gave me.” She looked back at Harry in the living room. “Maybe I'll retire soon.”  
Everybody at the table laughed, and Remus drank some more of the beer.  
"Harry will be brilliant, just wait and see. You'll love having a little of that adrenaline back. Oh, and you look very pretty in muggle robes, Minnie!” Sirius laughed, returning to the living room.  
Quim, Hagrid, and McGonagall left later in the evening, after the other children were taken home, they could give their real gifts to Harry, magical artifacts to entertain him.  
Remus was given the task of the boy's bath that night, which by a miracle wasn’t too difficult since he was exhausted. Lupin pulled him out of the tub in his arms and wrapped him in the towel, and barely managed to get him to put on his pajamas properly before the boy fell almost asleep on the bed. Remus only needed to lie down with him for five minutes and read one of The Tales of Beedle, the Bard. The boy had spent so much energy that day that he fell asleep very easily. Remus covered him, left the lamp on and the door ajar, and returned to the living room.  
Sirius was standing in the kitchen holding the last bottle of butterbeer with his hand and watching the picture that Quim had taken of them that was hung on the refrigerator door. He didn’t see Remus approaching, only felt when the man hugged him from behind with his icy hands touching his chest.  
“He’s asleep.”  
"Hmmm..." Sirius murmured, finishing the beer and dropping the bottle into the sink. They continued to look at the picture in the refrigerator for a moment. Remus loved how Harry genuinely laughed in the picture, hugging their necks and tossing his head back.  
"I think we're doing a great job."  
“We're getting better at it.” Sirius laughed softly.  
Remus lowered his hands to Sirius’ belly now and wrapped his arms around his waist. He rested his chin on his shoulder and looked at his face.  
“What is it?”  
“Nothing. I was just thinking that James would be happy.” He sighed. "For the first time, I'm feel like we are paying the debt we owe them... Properly. That we're doing it right.”  
"Of course we are.” Remus muttered. “We're doing it just right. Harry is happy and safe. James and Lily would be happy.”  
"I miss them every day.” Sirius's voice took on a deeper tone, and Remus soon felt him swallow and sniff, breathing deeply then.  
“Me too, Pads.”  
Sirius turned to him. They exchanged a kiss and then he took Remus's hand and pulled him into the living room. They sat on the couch, Black pulling Remus to lean against him, half lying in the middle of his legs.  
"It's been a long day, huh?" Sirius yawned, running his hands through the other's hair.  
"Yeah. I think I’m going to black out.” He laughed weakly, closing his eyes, relaxing into Sirius’ touch.  
"Harry told me that one of the little boys’ mothers doesn’t want to let him come here anymore." Sirius said quietly, a moment later, and Remus opened his eyes.  
“Why? Do you think she saw anything?”  
"No... Not because of magic, but because..." He tightened his legs around Remus's body, and the man looked up into Sirius' face. It took a moment, but he understood.  
“Because we’re together?!”  
Sirius nodded. Remus couldn’t believe it for a moment. His life was full of tragedies and bad things, but nevertheless all the people closest to them always acted so normally around their relationship, and this made him forget at times that the vast majority of people weren’t prepared to accept that people of the same sex liked each other.  
“That’s unbelievable.”  
"And she saw us kiss each other today, when singing the Happy Birthday, and then took the boy home. Didn’t you see it?”  
"No, I... I wasn’t worried about that.”  
“And neither of us should be.” Sirius lowered his hand to Remus’ back. "If she's upset, she's the one with the problem."  
Remus shook his head, stressed out now.  
“I didn’t even kiss you on the mouth!”  
Black laughed softly. He leaned his face against Lupin's hair and breathed in his scent, coming down to his ear.  
“Imagine if she knew the other things that we do.”  
Remus smiled. That managed to keep his mood from dropping, and he looked back at Sirius, kissing him.  
“Uh-uh.” Sirius muttered between the kiss. “This sofa is very uncomfortable.” He commented and stood up, pulling Remus with him.  
"Oh, I'm sorry, maiden.” Lupin rolled his eyes but laughed, following him down the hall to the bedroom.  
Sirius stopped in front of the door before they entered, and Remus continued to kiss him.  
"Why do you leave the light in his room always on?" Black asked between the kisses, staring at the half-open door to Harry's room. "He's not... afraid... of the dark..."  
"Hmm, will you stop talking or not?”  
Sirius laughed between the kiss. He grabbed Remus' shoulders and pulled him away, looking at his face.  
"That's ... Is it because you’re scared that...?"  
Remus rolled his eyes impatiently.  
"Is this the best time to discuss how my life completely changed when I was bitten and turned into a six-year-old werewolf in my own bedroom? Really?”  
"Oh, Rem..." Sirius put a hand to his face, stroking it. "You don’t have to worry about Harry..."  
"You know, that’s the same thing my father said. And it happened right there in that room.” He pointed to Harry's room, then sighed in frustration. "And now we're talking about my father, and the mood is ruined." He said, moving away from Sirius and entering the double room behind him.  
Remus hated to think about it. He couldn’t help worrying about Harry, thinking every night before bed, how terrible it’d be for him to let the same thing his father let happen to him, happen to Harry. He worried that the boy would feel the same fear he felt, that he would tell Sirius that there was a monster under the bed and he didn’t believe it like Remus’ father did... He couldn’t help but worry, he knew that there was danger and terror out there every night...  
His thoughts were cut off abruptly by Sirius who pulled him tightly around his waist and made him fall on the bed on top of him.  
“Ugh. You’re crazy!” He complained, but that didn’t last a second. Sirius's mouth was already kissing his neck, and he was forgetting every worry in his head.  
"I'm Sirius Black, you can be sure I know how to bring the mood back," the dark-haired man murmured beneath him, making him laugh. He pulled away just enough to take his wand from his pocket and close the bedroom door with a nod.

≈

Sirius was bathing Harry in the bathtub in the master bedroom, which was bigger for the boy who now almost reached his feet to the end of it. He had grown frighteningly from one year to the next, but still slim and delicate in appearance –perhaps because he was always going to be considered their baby for Sirius and Remus.  
Now he didn’t throw as much water out of the tub, but only because Sirius discovered that if he talked to him and made him focus on the subject, he’d be quiet.  
"A talking hat?" The boy murmured, impressed. "And how does it know?"  
"I think it reads our mind," Sirius explained.  
"So you just need to think what house you want to go to? I want to go to Gryffindor, just like you, Moony and my parents!"  
Sirius laughed and poured some water into the boy's soapy hair, removing the excess of shampoo.  
"I'm absolutely sure you're going to be sorted into Gryffindor, too. Your father's whole family was before him. You've been a Gryffindor ever since you were born." He laughed weakly and ruffled Harry's hair.  
"But you went to Gryffindor and your family was Slytherin, wasn’t it?" Harry looked at him. "Moony told me."  
"Yeah..." Sirius played a little more with the water, thinking about it. "That's why, answering to your question, no, it's not just thinking about which house you want to go to. The hat can see what kind of person you are, and what house you would do better in. It put me in Gryffindor because I was different from my whole family, and it knew that when it looked inside my mind."  
"Is Slytherin bad?" Harry asked, after a moment of silence.  
Sirius sighed and got to his feet, taking the boy's towel folded over the sink. He wiped his hands on it and opened it to Harry.  
"The house doesn’t make the students, it's the students who make the house. Slytherin isn’t a place of bad people, it's the place of ambitious and ingenious people, qualities that usually go hand in hand with... More extreme things." Sirius looked at Harry, who was staring at him with confusion in his face, and he realized that the little boy probably wasn’t understanding anything. He laughed. "No, Harry, not all Slytherins are evil. It's just that most of the bad guys are Slytherins." He shrugged. "Now come, get out of the water before you turn into a raisin," he laughed.  
Harry obeyed and left the bathtub, going to him and letting Sirius wrap him in the towel.  
"Sirius..." The boy called, and Sirius looked at him. "Why do I have this?"  
Harry touched his forehead, over his lightning-shaped scar, and Sirius stared at him for a moment, then sighed. He bent down so he could look Harry in the eye and pulled a strand of wet hair from the boy's forehead.  
"Because when you were still a baby, you did something very special that inherited that scar. So that neither you nor anyone else will forget who you are and what happened to you."  
"And what was it?"  
Sirius stared at him for a while, thinking of everything he should or should not say to a four-year-old. At last he smiled at him and touched his shoulders.  
"One day I promise I'll tell you everything, when you're big enough, okay? For now, you're going to have to be patient. Can you?"  
Harry pouted, but nodded. Sirius raised a smile to him, making him smile too, and stood up, finishing the boy's drying off.

≈

It was Saturday. The full moon from last night had been difficult, and as he began to regain consciousness Remus realized that he couldn’t remember when he blacked out and how he returned home. He was ready to feel the pain from last night cross every inch of his body before he even opened his eyes, but when he did, he felt nothing. He blinked a few times to get accustomed to the brightness of the room and the softness of the bed, and he realized that he was in his room, lying comfortably next to Sirius.  
Was it all a dream last night? he thought. He raised his head carefully and looked down at his own body. No blood, no sign of bruises, no pain or broken bones. He raised his hand and realized that one of his wrists was bandaged. He stared at his chest beneath his T-shirt and saw that there were no cuts there, only recent almost faded scars. He looked around, and found on his dresser a piece of chocolate and water waiting for him.  
Remus then sighed, a both relieved and incredulous sigh, while thinking about how lucky he was.  
Remus turned to Sirius, who was sleeping beside him. He touched his arm, and Sirius turned to him, drawing his body close to Remus and hugging him around the waist, snuggling closer before he yawned and opened his eyes.  
"Oh, good morning."  
"No bruises, no pain, nothing broken in the morning after a full moon...? Am I in paradise?”  
Sirius, still half groggy, smiled faintly with closed eyes.  
“It was one of my best jobs, indeed.”  
“When did I come back?”  
"I went to check when the sun was rising, and you were lying in the front door. I took you inside. Two broken ribs, dislocated wrist, a lot of blood. I healed everything while it was still fresh and avoided further damage. If nothing else works out, I can go work in St. Mungo's.” He laughed softly. "Just watch your wrist, I don’t know if I healed it completely, it was ugly. I don’t know what you did with it.”  
Remus hugged him tightly around the waist, closing his eyes.  
“I'm so lucky.”  
“Everyone knows that.” Sirius murmured, and laughed softly.  
They both were silent for a while, enjoying the laziness. Remus almost fell asleep again, but awoke to the sound of the door opening. He looked over at it and a recently awakened Harry with the messy hair came into the room, carrying his favorite and irreplaceable plush animal in a hand, a deer he had received from Sirius on his second birthday, which they named Prongs, of course.  
The Boy Who Lived now was six years old. There were days when he didn’t stop babbling for hours, and there were days when he liked to sit alone in his bedroom to play. He had friends in the neighborhood, with whom he played until late at night in the summer, and now he understood that he was different from the other children and that there were some things that they couldn’t know about him and his family. He asked questions, sometimes difficult to answer, but overall he didn’t cause any trouble and was a great companion for breakfast.  
“Moony!” He shouted when he saw Remus on the bed and ran up hopping on both of them. Sirius moaned in pain as Harry fell on him and started jumping, shaking the bed. Harry threw himself on Remus and hugged him by the neck, making him laugh. "How was your night out?"  
“Very good, buddy!” He smiled. “I had a lot of fun. And you guys, did you cause too much damage alone last night?”  
"Sirius let me have ice cream" he whispered, but they both heard.  
“Hey! Don’t you know the meaning of secret?! Now you’ll pay the price!” Sirius glared at him and pulled him up from Remus, laying Harry on the bed and beginning to tickle him, who screamed and laughed at the same time.  
"Moony always knows when we're lying! I don’t like lying to him!” The boy laughed, making Remus laugh too.  
"That’s no excuse!" Sirius teased, then laughed. The three of them sat down, and Harry looked at Sirius.  
"And you, when's it going to be your night out?"  
Harry had learned that both Remus and Sirius had made a deal and were entitled to a night out a month, to stroll and "have fun." This way it was easier for him to understand why Remus disappeared once a month, and Sirius was then really entitled to go out one night to do something by himself or with friends – which basically meant someone from the Order – or just have fun like Padfoot. However Harry was already beginning to ask too many questions about it, and the last time he asked, Remus explained that he had condition and that he needed to go out once a month to feel better. When the right time came he’d explain more, and soon Harry would understand – or at least Remus hoped, but truth was that he was scared to death of the day Harry would find out the truth about him.  
“Hmm, good question. Maybe I'll go out for the weekend to leave you two alone so you can miss me.” Sirius raised an eyebrow at Harry, smiling, then whispered, "I know you prefer it when you're alone with me. I give you ice cream!”  
Harry looked at Remus.  
“He gives me chocolate.”  
“Merlin!” Sirius looked at Remus in exasperation. "One of us is going to have to stop, or this boy will be sick!"  
As if answering this statement, Harry's stomach rumbled loudly and they all laughed.  
"Okay." Remus pulled back the blankets and stood up, holding out his hand to Harry. "Let's make some coffee, shall we?"  
Harry promptly jumped out of bed and took his hand. His favourite part of the morning was to help prepare breakfast for the three of them. He noticed Remus' bandaged wrist and ran his hand over the band, leaving a kiss then.  
"It’ll get better soon, Moony.”  
Remus smiled. He no longer asked about the injuries after the full moons, as he had already got used to them. Remus hugged Harry by the shoulders and brought him close to him until they reached the kitchen.  
"Take the frying pan for me, I'll make us some omelettes."  
“Yay, omelettes!” The boy jumped and went to get the frying pan with excitement as if Remus had told them they were going to Hogwarts.  
Remus loved Harry and loved how sensitive and affectionate he was. This was the biggest sign that the kid was being raised correctly. It was the best part of raising a child knowing that he was doing everything right, and his greatest gift was to know that he was doing something good in James and Lily's memory, and that their choice to stay with Harry was proving to be the right choice.

≈

Sirius heard the bedroom door open and a cough coming from somewhere in the dark, in the middle of the night. He sat up, watching Harry in his pajamas standing by the bed and frowning.  
“Harry? What is it, is everything okay?”  
"I don’t feel well," Harry whispered, not wanting to wake Remus. Sirius reached out for him and pulled him into his lap.  
“What's the problem?”  
“My nose is stuffy, my throat hurts and my tummy doesn’t feel good...” He whimpered, pouting.  
Remus shifted in bed, waking up too, and sat looking at both of them over Sirius' shoulder.  
“What happened?” He asked, sleepy.  
"Sorry, Moony, I didn’t mean to bother you!" The boy grimaced and Remus shook his head.  
"No problem, buddy. What is it?”  
“I don’t feel well.”  
"Oh, no..." Remus frowned while running his hands through the boy’s messy hair, and Sirius took the wand from the dresser and turned on the lights. "Does he have a fever?"  
Sirius touched the back of his hand to the boy's forehead.  
"He feels hot, I think so." He remarked, and Remus checked too. Sirius shifted to release Harry and get up, but Harry held him more firmly.  
“Where are you going?”  
Sirius smiled at him.  
"I'll just get some medicine for you. You can stay here with Moony, I'll be right back.”  
Harry nodded and crawled into Remus' lap on the bed, nestling into his chest. Remus noticed that the boy looked rather unwell, in fact.  
"I don’t like feeling this way." He whimpered and then, suddenly, gasped, scaring Remus. “We were going to go to Diagon Alley tomorrow! Can we still go?!”  
"Not if you're still not feeling well.”  
Harry looked up, staring at Remus.  
"But you promised! You said we could finally go!”  
Harry had been looking forward to it for weeks, ever since Sirius had started telling him all about what they’d find there and about how, in a few years, he’d buy his supplies to go to Hogwarts there. Remus sighed to see the tears appear on the boy's face, and at that moment Sirius returned to the room with medicine and water and sat next to them.  
“What's the problem?”  
"Remus said we can not go to Diagon Alley anymore!"  
“I didn’t say-“  
"You said we can’t go if I'm not feeling well!"  
Remus looked at Sirius for help. He hated seeing Harry cry like this.  
"Harry, Moony just wants you to get better. That's the most important. We can go next weekend, I promise.”  
Harry sniffed and wiped his eyes.  
"But... you said we could see the owls and the cats..."  
"They'll still be there next week. Besides, you may be feeling better in the morning and we can go. So let's take the medicine now, shall we?”  
Harry nodded and took the medicine, swallowing it down with the help of a sip of water.  
"Do you want to sleep here tonight?" Remus asked, and Harry nodded and settled into the bed between them, sharing Remus’ pillow.  
"Nox," Sirius murmured and lay down with them.  
Next morning Harry woke up feeling much better, and the excitement about meeting Diagon Alley only made him better even faster. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for everyone who read and commented it! I hope to receive more comments on what you're thinking of the story and what do you expect for the next chapters, and you can check out my Tumblr (@amortentiando) and ask me questions about the story or any other thing there anytime! <3
> 
> p.s: This last part of the chapter was based on this post I found on Tumblr: http://dracolucivs.tumblr.com/post/158329272988/could-you-write-about-wolfstar-raising-harry


	3. 0. A new beginning - pt. 3

When he was seven years old, Harry was brought home by a neighbor and mother of one of his little friends. She looked angry, and when Sirius opened the door Harry ran in and Sirius looked confused as he looked at the woman again.  
"Control your... _son_ , because we will not tolerate it if he hits mine again!" The woman said in an angry, controlled voice. "Poor child, learning to behave like an animal," she mumbled before turning her back and walking away from their house. “Have a good day!” She cried, from far away.  
Sirius closed the door, still confused, and looked at Harry who was lying, almost buried, in an armchair in the living room with his arms crossed and a terrible expression only an angry child could pull. The sound of the shower Remus was having could be heard in the hallway, and Sirius approached the armchair where the boy was and crouched down in front of him, making him look at him.  
Harry was already so grown up now. He was passing Sirius's waist, and he could already reach for the cups in the kitchen cupboard without climbing onto anything. He could also conjure up small things like flowers and tree leaves from time to time if he concentrated enough with the help of the two adults. He had been wearing glasses for a few months now, since he started complaining constantly of headaches during the lessons where Remus taught him to read and write.  
It was Remus' idea to raise him at home during his early years until he entered Hogwarts, primarily because in the village where he lived, almost all the children were homeschooled, and also because Lupin was good at teaching. Harry was learning very well how to write and rad, and he already knew basics mathematics as much as the other muggle children.  
The boy now also knew a little more about the wizarding world. He knew that he was part of a different family and that there were many like them. Sirius and Remus sometimes took him to Diagon Alley so he could see what it was like to be among other wizards, and let him choose some toys and candy in a joke shop.  
When it comes to their family... Harry had always been used to calling Remus “Moony” and Sirius “Padfoot” or “Pads”, because they were easy-to-learn nicknames. Once he appeared with the joke of calling them "moomy" and "dadfoot" and until then it was funny, they laughed a lot, Remus and Sirius even began to call themselves that sometimes to provoke eachother or for fun, but they soon realized that this could be confusing for Harry, when on a night before bed he called Sirius his father. Until then, Harry had always heard about his parents as some people they knew and that was no longer there, but they never really explained anything to the little boy.  
Black, of course, freaked out. Remus spent an hour trying to calm him down and then they decided to talk to Harry the next day. They explained to Harry that they were not his parents; that his parents had died when he was very young, and that they left them with Moony and Padfoot because they were his parent’s best friends and would take good care of him. They showed pictures, told stories, and by that evening the little boy, though still confused, seemed more enlightened. He understood easily, and they agreed that if Harry wanted to, he could call them uncles even if they weren’t blood related. That night the two men went to sleep thinking about it, and Sirius remembers thinking it was so weird... He had grown so used to being Harry's guardian that he had forgotten that for the boy it might start to look confusing if there weren’t explanations.  
The famous Harry Potter, seven and a half years old, tall and slim, with rebellious hair like his father, and bright green eyes just like his mother. He looked more like his parents every day, which made it hard to face him sometimes.  
"Harry..." Sirius called as the boy looked away from him. “Look at me. What happened? Why did you hit your friend?”  
Harry was reluctant to speak, but after a while he opened his mouth and looked at his hands in his lap, before replying quietly,  
“He said...”  
“What?” Sirius didn’t hear right. “Louder, please.”  
"He said I'm son of two f-" Harry blinked and looked at Sirius. "I don’t want to repeat it.”  
"Oh." Sirius realised what was happening, and it took him a second to think. That little shit, always giving them some sort of problem and always saying bullshit to Harry... "And that's why you hit him?”  
"He also called Moony a... S-scary monster. Said he was... Shredded.” Harry repeated, frowning, clearly not understanding the meaning of the word. "And said I was found in a trash can, because I can’t be son of two men."  
Sirius laughed. He put his hand to his face, not knowing where to begin to deal with this, but it was impossible not to laugh at how confused Harry was.  
"What did he mean, Pads?"  
"He was being mean to you, Harry. He thinks Moony and I are your parents, but he doesn’t understand this because he’s accustomed to having a father and a mother in his home. Get it?”  
Harry nodded.  
"But he was insulting me," Harry argued.  
“Yes, he was trying.” Sirius laughed softly, but tried to be serious. "And that's why you hit him?"  
“Well, yes. He swore at you, insulted Moony, and I don’t even know what he... Was meaning... To say.” Harry looked like the most confused person in the world at that moment.  
"He wanted to offend Moony's looks, but that doesn’t matter, because we both know that Moony is beautiful, right?”  
Harry agreed.  
"Then I took a tree branch and I hit him. But I didn’t hit him that hard!” The boy explained, trying to improve his version of the story.  
Inside, Sirius wanted to hug him. Oh, come on! This was the son of James Potter, ladies and gentlemen! A real rebel! However he was sure Remus would strangle him if he supported Harry’s action, so he took a deep breath and stood up, asking for a space in the armchair and sitting, pulling the boy into his lap.  
"Harry, you can’t hit people when they offend you. Violence isn’t always the answer, it just makes the other person want to retaliate as well. When they do that, the best thing to do is to ignore it. Ignore it and come home, get away from these people, okay?”  
Harry nodded. Okay, The father's speech was given. Now...  
"But sometimes fighting works, too," he whispered into the boy's ear, and Harry grinned. "When you grow up, you can use magic to scare these kinds of people. I guarantee it’s better than a tree branch, they will never mess with you again!”  
Harry laughed weakly at Sirius, but before they could continue the subject, Remus entered the room.  
“Are you done with playing outside already? Here I was worried that I’d have to bring you home dragged by the feet like I did yesterday” Lupin sat down on the couch in front of them and released the book he held in his lap.  
"Yeah, he and the boys weren’t doing very well today.” Sirius explained, and saw the godson jump from his lap to go and throw himself on top of his other love on the other couch.  
"Moony." Harry hugged him by the throat and kissed his face several times, making Remus blink in confusion. “You're beautiful!”  
Sirius smiled at Remus' confused look. _James, Lily, you did a good job making this little guy._

~*~

It was Saturday. Remus was reading a book in the living room when the house became too quiet. Harry had just gotten a new broom for his eighth birthday, one of normal size, and he should be doing all sorts of damage in the house, but for some reason everything was very quiet. Sirius was in the garage, fixing something on the motorbike as he listened to a record from one of his favorite bands loudly, but there was no sign of the little marauder and Remus was starting to get restless when he heard the crash of something falling on the ground.  
Dropping the book on the couch, he ran to the room he shared with Sirius and sighed relieved to see that Harry was fine. The noise came from a box that was on top of the cabinet and probably fell when the boy hit it with his broom, scattering various papers across the floor. Now the little one was sitting on the floor, with the papers around him, and he seemed very focused on something. Remus was approaching in silence, with the intention of catching Harry by surprise, but was surprised was him to see what the boy had in his hand. He held a piece of parchment, old and yellowed by time, where Remus recognized his own handwriting, somewhat blurred by the haste with which he wrote the words. Around him on the floor, there were several drawings that Sirius made at the same time when they were in school, but Remus couldn’t take his eyes off the list that Harry read so intently, for seeing it after so many years and remembering that it existed brought back a flood of memories of an era where everything was simpler.

That list contained the reasons that kept him from being happy, from giving in to what he felt for Sirius when he discovered what that horribly good feeling was. It was a list of reasons not to love Sirius, and the reasons were mostly because he was a monster, he wansn’t supposed to feel such a warming and amazingly good feeling like love. He wasn’t supposed to love such a sweet, gentle creature like that, he wouldn’t know how to hold him without hurting him, he wasn’t made to love tender and to be gentle, he had a monster inside that only knew violence and darkness, and Sirius didn’t deserve this. Sirius didn’t deserve to love a monster.  
Remus wrote that list in a moment of disturbance and despair, but mostly fear. He feared that if he hurt Sirius it might kill him, and he couldn’t bare to think that. He feared that if he gave in to that feeling once he wouldn’t be capable of controlling himself, because even the monster inside him liked the idea of having his best friend all for himself. He feared because that feeling was crushing his heart, was preventing him from breathing, killing him inside out, and he _liked_ that. He feared because Sirius was _so freaking beautiful_ and mostly because he wasn’t afraid of Remus at all.¹  
And at that moment, while looking at Harry sitting on the floor reading that piece of parchment, Remus feared again, because written in the end of the list with large letters, the words "You're a werewolf" stood out from the others, seeming to mock him, and it was precisely these words that Harry was staring at with such concentration. In an impulse, Remus quickly plucked the parchment from Harry's hands, and he looked at the foster-father with wide-eyed green eyes, as if he'd been caught doing something wrong.  
"You shouldn’t be messing with this." Remus said with a touch of panic in his voice. Harry shrugged, knowing he had done it, but he couldn’t contain his curiosity, so he asked in a sweet, innocent voice:  
"Is that why you have your night out?"  
Remus stood still. He couldn’t even breathe. He was afraid, trembling with fear that Harry would be terrified when he found out. For seven years that fear had consumed him every day.  
"Moony, what’s this?" Harry stood up. "You didn’t want to be with me and Pads?"  
Lupin was not ready for these questions. He opened his mouth to answer, but the words just wouldn’t come out. They clutched at his throat, a mixture of fear and panic, stopping him from speaking. _Harry knows, he knows now that I am a monster_ , and suddenly all his old fears had surfaced, cluttering his thoughts, and just as he thought he’d fall apart, Remus felt small arms wrap around his waist.  
He blinked in confusion, realizing that his eyes were stinging with tears in fear. When did he start crying? When was the last time he cried out of fear?  
He looked down and found Harry hugging him, and in a slightly choked voice Harry said,  
"Don’t cry Moony, I promise I won’t mess with your stuff again, but don’t cry, please. I’m sorry!”  
A wave of tenderness made Remus recoil and he took a deep breath and bent down, reaching Harry and hugging him, holding him tightly in his arms, as if he were afraid he might run away. For seven years he was running away from that moment.  
"When I was little, a bad man hurt me.” He explained, speaking quietly, still holding Harry in his arms. "He did something to me.” He stopped talking for a moment and felt Harry’s arms tightening in his embrace as an incentive for him to continue. "Do you know what a werewolf is, Harry?"  
Remus felt when the little boy agreed.  
"That's what the bad man did to me. He bit me and made me a werewolf.” Lupin pulled back a little, looking the boy in the eyes. “That's why I got my night out. So I can transform myself without hurting you or Pads.”  
For a moment, Remus stared at Harry's childish face, tense and frightened, wishing it wouldn’t make him afraid of him. The man closed his eyes and felt Harry's small hands wiping his wet cheeks. When he opened his eyes again, Harry stared at him gravely, and asked in a worried way.  
“Does it hurt?”  
Remus blinked, confused.  
"When you transform?"  
"It hurts more to think I might hurt you." Remus admitted in a hoarse whisper.  
Harry was still serious.  
"You're Moony.” He said without removing his hands from his face. "You take care of me when I get sick and tell me stories. You make Pads laugh when he’s sad and make the best chocolate cake in the world, and also lecture us, but only when we behave badly, but you never hurt” and saying that, the boy came over and gave Remus a soft kiss. "It won’t hurt anymore. I love you, Moony.”  
Harry smiled and Remus literally felt as if the weight of the whole world had been lifted off his shoulders. Harry wasn’t afraid of him. The feeling of happiness in his chest was similar to what he felt the day the Marauders discovered his secret, and yet they stayed by his side. Unable to contain, Remus hugged the boy tightly again, unable to believe that all that love and all that tenderness came from such a young child, and that made him feel so happy, warm and loved inside. Remus felt at that moment that he was a father – a real father.  
"What's with all this mess here?" Sirius' deep voice brought them out of their moment, but the good feeling was still there. Harry grabbed a sketch and ran to Sirius.  
“Pads, look what I found! It's drawings of Moony!”  
Sirius held Harry in his arms and looked at the sketch, a nostalgic, proud smile lighting his face.  
"I made it, did you know that?" He said, boasting. "Actually, I made all those there.” He gestured to the other drawings scattered on the floor. Coming down from Sirius's arms, the boy ran to sit on the floor beside Remus, looking fascinated at each of the drawings. Padfoot eventually decided to join them and noted with some concern Remus’ red eyes, who shook his head and smiled, saying wordlessly that everything was fine. Soon the three of them became distracted by the drawings and the memories, Remus and Sirius plunged into the nostalgia that the drawings brought out and Harry delighted in their stories.  
They found inside that box countless documents and photos that they no longer remembered existed. There were polaroids of them at school, with the dates written on the photo, some alone, some with everyone together. Most of them were just Remus, Sirius and James, and Harry was amazed at how much he really looked like his father. There were also some of Lily with them in Hogwarts times, but those were rare. She appeared more in the post Hogwarts photos, though photos of this era were rarer, given the circumstances back then. There was a picture of her pregnant, photos of their wedding - which Harry loved, and asked to put one of them in a picture frame in his bedroom. There was one of them dancing on a gray afternoon in front of his house in Godrics Hollow (which Harry also asked to be put in his room), and one that neither Sirius nor Remus remembered existed, of the old Order of the Phoenix still with all his living members. They exchanged a sad, nostalgic look when Harry asked them who those people were.  
"They were friends. Good friends of all of us. Some you know, others you will know one day.” Remus told him.  
"One day we can tell you about all this, but not yet. Ok?” Sirius ran his hand over Harry's head, which curiously nodded in agreement and put the photo with the others in the box.  
“When is this?” Harry raised one in which the two of them were together, with Harry's parents and four other people – that Sirius and Remus knew to be Marlene McKinnon, Dorcas Meadowes, Frank and Alice Longbottom – dressed in nice clothes, waving happily at the camera. His parents, and Sirius and Remus themselves, seemed particularly happy in that picture, as if they were glowing, and even Harry couldn’t help but notice. Remus smiled at the memory of that picture and looked at Sirius, which made him smile even more. The photo dates back to the spring of 1980, three years after leaving Hogwarts. They were twenty years old.  
“Hmm, this is from the day Moony and I, uh...”  
"We decided we wanted to be together forever, so to speak.” Remus explained and Harry gasped, looking at them in surprise and wide green eyes.  
“Are you _married?!_ ”  
They both laughed at his reaction.  
"It was not a real marriage, Harry.”  
"It was better." Sirius smiled, cocky. “It was a symbolic event, with our closest friends...”  
"Because your father insisted that we had to do this before..." Remus and Sirius exchanged a look again, and Remus sighed. "It didn’t have any of those wedding traditions, and we didn’t sign anything before the State..."  
"Why not?"  
“Because we couldn’t, and we didn’t even want it. We just wanted to get our closest friends together as witnesses, and that was enough.”  
“That must’ve been great.” Harry commented, putting away that last picture and closing the box. "I wanted to be there to see."  
Remus was once again lost in thoughts. The only thing that would make everything perfect would be to have James and Lily there with them, but looking at Harry, it's as if they were. The boy's green eyes reflected the same sweetness that Remus saw in Lily's, the same gift of seeing good in people, even when they themselves didn’t see it, and James was there too, in every gesture and smile of Harry, the same talent of saying the right thing at the right time. Again, Remus felt they made the right choice and that they were honoring the memory of their friends.  
“No. You didn’t”. Remus said quietly and kissed Harry's head before he stood up. He remembered with that picture how they had had a wonderful day in the midst of the chaos and misery of war.  
Sirius ruffled Harry's hair and stood up as well, taking the box to put it away again.  
"And who is this?" Harry asked, finding one last photo on the floor and showing it to them. It was one of the individual polaroids they took out last year from Hogwarts, a chubby white boy with watery eyes, smiling faintly at the camera.  
Remus watched Sirius swallow and turn white, and snatched the photo from Harry's hands before anything else.  
"No one important." He said it at once. "Now come on, go take a shower, you're all sweaty, and I'm going to make dinner." He directed the boy who muttered to the door of the room, but he obeyed.  
Remus turned to Sirius.  
“This photo shouldn’t even be here, I didn’t know...”  
"Why..." Sirius frowned. "Why doesn’t he show up in the other pictures? He was in all of them, I remember.”  
Lupin shook his head and looked at his hands, holding the photo. He couldn’t feel the fiery anger Sirius felt for Peter at the sight of that picture of the boy, still young and as lost and frightened as they were. He couldn’t feel anything but regret that everything had happened as it happened, because he couldn’t conceive the idea of that boy in the photo having killed the Potters. However he never let Sirius know that, because he knew his reaction was more appropriate. Remus _should_ hate Peter that way. He just couldn’t.  
“I erased him from all the photos.” He explained. “Right after everything happened. I didn’t want to lose all these pictures, so I did it, but I must have lost this one.” He looked at the photo he held once more before ripping it in half and seeing Peter Pettigrew's weak smile stop moving. He sighed. “There you go.”  
Sirius was still standing there, his body rigid, his face white. Remus worried that the anger and that desire for revenge in him would endanger Sirius one day. He knew that Sirius would never be able to overcome that.  
"I'm sorry," was the only thing he could think of to say, though it was something stupid and useless.  
“Whatever.” Sirius muttered, walking past him and leaving the room.

~*~

Sirius woke up scared and stunned when he felt the bed sway and Remus jump up and run into the hallway. He sat on the bed, feeling his heart pound in his chest with the fright and looked around still groggy sleep and confused, not knowing what to do. He then heard whispers coming from Harry's room and got up, going there carefully and still sleepy and with foggy eyes. He stood in the doorway of the room and saw Remus sitting by Harry's bedside light, running his hand through his hair and whispering to him to sleep again.  
“Moons?” Sirius called softly. Remus looked at him and asked for silence with his finger.  
Sirius waited. A few seconds later, when Harry was already asleep again, Remus left and closed the door a bit leaving it with an open crack. Sirius yawned, half asleep, and hugged him around the waist as Remus passed him, following him back to the bedroom.  
“What was it?”  
"I heard him having a nightmare." Remus explained.  
“Hmm... You mean ' I heard Harry grumble in his sleep'...”  
“Shut up.”  
"Do I need to get the puppy to sleep again?" He teased as they climbed onto the bed, and Remus huffed. The two of them went under the blanket and Sirius hugged him. "You know I know how to make you sleep like a rock..."  
"Not when you're drunk sleepy and talking bullshit, then I'll pass. He really was having a nightmare this time.”  
Sirius grunted, but his eyes were closed again.  
“Pads?” Remus called, a moment later.  
“Hmm?”  
"You think James had time... Um, to think that Peter betrayed him? Do you think he didn’t think of it, or that his first thought was that he had been caught and tortured, as we thought...? Do you think James and Lily died knowing they were betrayed? That this was their last thought?”  
Sirius opened his eyes again, sleep momentarily fading from him. He stared into the darkness of the room as he thought about what Remus had said, feeling the same tightness in his chest that he felt every time he remembered his best friend, and the pain struck him. Then he thought of Peter, and the rage burned him inside so that all his muscles tightened. Remus rubbed his hand lightly on his back, comforting him.  
“Sorry. I was just thinking, I didn’t want to...”  
"I promised myself I'd kill Peter, even if it was the last thing I did.”  
“We don’t even know if he's still alive. We know that the remaining Voldemort followers consider him guilty for the ruin of his master, and the Ministry has been looking for him for years...”  
“He may still be hiding. Peter is good at being a cowardly rat.”  
"But spend years like this in the form of an animal? It is possible?!”  
"Of course yes. I just think after a while you start to..." Sirius shrugged. “Forget what it's like to be human.”  
The two of them were quiet again, each one immersed in their own thoughts.  
"If I had arrived minutes earlier that night... Just a few minutes."  
"If you had, you would be dead as well, Sirius."  
"But I could have done something... Maybe Lily had managed to escape..."  
Remus shook his head and tightened his arms around Sirius' warm body.  
“Stop it. It would’ve made no difference, and I would have lost you. Lost Harry.”  
“You could raise him without me, you're incredibly good at it...”  
"No, Sirius.” Remus cut off, distressed just at the thought. "Dumbledore would never have left him with me. I'm not Harry's legal guardian, and I'm a monster.”  
"Oh, shut up, Lupin..."  
“You know it's true! He would be safer with his uncles. And I'd be all alone. Tell me, how do you think I would survive like this?”  
"You would find a way."  
Remus settled himself on the bed so that he could look at Sirius's face, and he lifted his chin to meet Remus's gaze in the room that, now dark, had become accustomed to his sight.  
"I've literally had you for longer than I haven’t. I've lived eleven years without you, and you've been in my life for eighteen years. Do you think I could survive without you? Sirius, I would miss you even if I never met you.”  
Sirius rolled his eyes, but he felt his heart miss a beat. He would never get used to it, to having Remus for himself.  
"Said the man who almost abandoned us a few years ago..."  
"Just because I didn’t want to hurt you, you prat. And it's different, because you’d be alive. I can’t even imagine losing you that night along with James and Lily. I would die.”  
Sirius straightened up on the bed, leaning against Remus and poked his face with his finger.  
"You're stronger than you think, stop being dramatic."  
"I cannot believe I'm trying to convince you that I couldn’t live without you and you're disagreeing. You stop being so stubborn!”  
"Are we even discussing this?" Sirius made a little grimmace.  
“No, we're done. And I was right.”  
"Ha, you're so sweet when you're upset.” Black smirked and kissed Remus 'jaw, which rolled his eyes, but a second later he gripped Sirius' waist and turned them on the bed abruptly, startling him and pinning Sirius under him.  
“Shut up now.” He murmured, his lips brushing against Sirius' grin, before kissing him.  
“I thought you weren’t interested in…”  
"Shhh," Remus murmured through the kiss and Sirius laughed softly, giving up at last.

The next morning came before the two of them could actually sleep. They were both sleepy and tired, but relaxed, when they decided it was best to get out of bed since Harry would wake up anyway. They went into the kitchen and Sirius brewed coffee and pancakes while Remus read the Daily Prophet sitting on the counter, and slowly the silence of the house was filled by the process of the waking of Harry through the door of his bedroom opening, his slippers dragging on the floor, the noise of the bathroom, of him brushing the teeth...  
At last the boy appeared in the kitchen door wearing blue pajamas and crooked glasses and hair like a nest. He said good morning and sat next to Remus on the counter, and he ran his hand through the boy’s hair trying to comb it a little while reading an article from the Prophet without taking his eyes off the words.  
"The Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher has changed again.”  
“No news there.”  
Sirius dropped two pancakes on each one's plate and then came to sit on the leftover bench on the other side of Remus, carrying his plate and his cup. Remus looked at him – he was absurdly beautiful, wearing a white T-shirt from the Muggle band The Ramones, so battered that the symbol was almost gone and his collar was pierced and fell over one shoulder; with broad shoulders, chin and jaw set, cheeks smooth, long curved eyelashes, black hairs gripped by the wand that held them behind his head and a few wisps falling in front of his face the same way he did in school when it made Remus choke on his tea or wish to jump from the astronomy tower; and Remus wondered once more how he had ended up there. How did he end up with a family and anyone’s dream man without even trying?!  
The answer came along with a tragic story, so it was best not to ask.  
Remus noticed that he was staring at Sirius for too much time before he opened a small smile at him and began to eat.

~*~

Padfoot, the huge black dog, was not a weird concept to Harry. He had been familiar with the animal since before his parents died, for Sirius had the habit of appearing to him as a dog when the little boy was sad and needed to cheer up. This lasted through his childhood, so Harry was accustomed to seeing, from time to time, a huge black dog in the house, usually when he was down and needed a few nibbles and jokes to cheer himself up. Over time, this became less frequent, so that Harry regarded Padfoot as a kind of imaginary friend that others could see or something. The odd thing was that he never thought that was strange, and never asked any questions. The fact that the boy had grown up halfway between the Muggle world and the wizarding world made him grow up like this, finding things that were not normal for his little friends something normal for him. After all, he was used to see Remus making food, or he and Sirius tidying up the house or solving several other little problems without making any effort other than waving the wand.  
It was when the boy was already ten years old that he discovered that Sirius was Padfoot. This was never a secret they planned to keep from Harry, but they eventually waited for him to grow up to tell, out of fear that he was afraid - what Remus said no longer made sense since he'd discovered he was a werewolf and was completely at ease about it. So they decided it was time to tell.  
The three of them decided that they would camp for a weekend, and chose a cool forest on the outskirts of Hogsmeade, where Hogwarts castle could be seen in the distance. It was a beautiful, quiet clearing, on a high ground, which they discovered through the clear nights as the Marauders, accompanying Remus in his transformations. After settling in the chosen spot, Harry helped the two pick up sticks to make the bonfire and learned from Sirius how to assemble one. They finished, and Remus took a stick from the floor.  
"Harry, we want to show you something."  
"Okay," he said, looking at them curiously, and adjusted his glasses on his face, watching Remus follow Sirius to a nearby stone in the middle of the clearing. Sirius climbed onto the stone and Remus stood next to him, and Sirius looked at the godson with an amused smile as he took off his coat and dropped it on the floor, only leaving Harry more curious.  
"Okay, now, you don’t need to be scared about it, okay?" Remus held up his hand to him before anything else.  
Harry nodded anxiously, watching with concentration.  
"It's something your godfather can do, and your father could, too, it's a secret we kept for years, and you deserve to know."  
"Oh, go with it, Moony.” Sirius asked and clapped a hand on the other, bracing himself as if he were going to run from there as at the start of a race. He fixed his eyes on the stick in Remus' hands, looking anxious, and Harry only became more curious still.  
"There it is," Remus said, and then with an impulse he threw the stick far and wide.  
Harry jumped back when he saw his godfather leap from the stone and change shape in midair, turning into a huge black dog and running at an absurd speed behind the stick flying in the air. He jumped, several yards away, and he caught the stick in the air with his mouth, landing on the ground again softly.  
“wow!” Harry shouted, getting to his feet so fast he almost fell. “What… I… How...! Wow!” He looked wide-eyed at Remus. “How did he do that?! Can I do it too ?!”  
Remus laughed. The two watched the dog run back to them and deliver the stick at Harry's feet, barking happily at him then.  
“Padfoot!” Harry grinned, running his hand over the animal's head. He looked, still shocked, at Remus next. “Padfoot is Sirius! I always thought the nickname was given to him because of the dog!”  
Remus laughed, clapping hands, and Padfoot whimpered biting the tip of Harry's finger.  
"I thought my father had given you this nickname, I don’t know why, sorry." Harry shook his head. "Now it all makes sense, I've never seen Sirius in the same place as Padfoot!"  
"Exactly, Harry." Remus approached them and patted the dog's head.  
"Well... Can I do it, too?" Harry looked at him curiously. "You said my father could!"  
Remus bent down to be the size of Harry, but the boy had grown so much that that way he was taller than Moony.  
"No, they aren’t born with that ability. They're animagi, Harry. People with the ability to become animals. But animagus becomes animagi through magic, and it is very difficult. Sirius and your father took two years to figure out how to do it so they could come with me during the full moon because the werewolf doesn’t hurt other animals.” Remus told him. "But you have to understand that it is illegal to become an Animagus without the ministry knowing, and your father and Sirius have never been registered. Nobody, besides us and Dumbledore, know that Sirius can do this, ok?”  
“Of course.” Harry said, already staring at the animal again. "I'm good at keeping secrets."  
Remus smiled.  
"As a matter of fact, you are.” He clutched the boy's hair and looked at Padfoot then, stroking his ear. "Okay, now you, you old dog, get back to normal because we're having dinner.”  
Sirius let out a loud grunt and rested his nose on Remus's face, giving him a lick on the face before running away and turning again. Harry watched, shocked, and smiled as Sirius approached again. He had that bright look on his face that Sirius simply loved, from whom he looked at his godfather as if he were the most incredible man in the world.  
Sirius wished James could have seen that look too.

~*~

It was a late afternoon on a hot, stuffy Sunday. Sirius was sweating and suffering in the kitchen, sprawled on the floor and trying to tinker with the plumbing from the kitchen sink that had been damaged. How had he come to this? Remus, of course. He said that magic was not helping anymore and that he’d call a plumber, whatever that was, but Sirius remarked that he could do it himself. Remus laughed.  
"You're just a pretty face, Sirius. Let the pros work." He said, past Sirius and nipping his butt lightly.  
"Hey! I'm not just a pretty face! I might as well do it!"  
Remus laughed with amusement.  
"Of course you are. We can’t be good at everything in life, can we? Leave it to me."  
"No!" Sirius tapped his foot. "Leave it to _me_. I can do it in one afternoon!"  
It couldn’t be so hard, right?  
Wrong.  
It was hard. Sirius was dirty, sweaty, wet and smelly, he had been trying to fix it for hours, but even the wand wasn’t really helping. He was thinking of giving up, but the idea of letting Remus call the plumber – which he found to be a Muggle profession, usually occupied by men – as well as having to admit that he in fact _was_ just a pretty face, it was stressful.  
Lupin was in Harry's room with the boy, studying. That particular afternoon Harry was writing an essay with Moony’s help, who wasn’t feeling very well, because the next full moon was on the way the next night. Sirius realized earlier that his face was pale and his eyes were red, and he seemed to be making an unusual effort to remain calm, as he sometimes did. Nevertheless, when Sirius asked if he didn’t want to rest, he insisted on spending the afternoon studying with Harry.  
Sirius came back to real life when a splash of water splashed across his face and cursed loudly, jumping up and down and slamming his forehead into the bottom of the sink as he tried to get out of there too quickly. He stood in the middle of the kitchen and ran his hands over his wet face and hair, cursing again and sprinkling water on everything with his hands.  
The sink pipe continued splashing water everywhere as if it were stuck, and he didn’t know what to do as he watched the water wetting the entire floor of the kitchen. When he moved to do something about it, he heard a crash of glass breaking and a scared scream of Harry coming from the room, and his heart instantly stopped.  
Sirius let go of the tools he held and ran into the hallway without even thinking. He didn’t know why, but bad things crossed his mind that instant. In a fraction of a second to the room, all sorts of bad things went through his head. He thought, for some reason, of the last moments of terror of James and Lily, imagining that all they desperately wanted was to protect their son. He thought that perhaps that was the moment, after years of quiet, when evil would haunt Harry again. He and Remus secretly waited for it every moment of every day, they both knew it even though it wasn’t spoken. They expected something bad would happen, though a part of them wished to believe that perhaps everything had really ended for some reason, on the night of Halloween in 1980. Then at last he thought of Remus, how the beast inside him was restless and despite being struggling to ignore it, he could slip off and hurt Harry, and he’d never forgive himself. Sirius heart pounded in his chest with this thought.  
Sirius stormed into the room and looked around in alarm. He found the two of them standing in the opposite corner of the window, Remus with his wand wrapped toward the window and Harry leaning against the wall, his eyes wide still staring.  
"What happened?!" Sirius almost screamed, looking back at the broken window before he faced Remus, who seemed too calm. "Remus! Harry! Are you okay?!"  
Remus looked at him and nodded.  
"We were talking about spells and I told him about the Patronus Charm. He wanted to see mine."  
Sirius looked at the small, slender boy in the corner of the room, and now that he had understood that everything was okay, he realized that Harry's wonder had something of surprise and admiration. Remus' patron was a wolf – not a werewolf, but a giant, imposing and majestic wolf.  
"It fled through the window," Remus explained, when he saw the shock in Sirius' expression. "I hadn’t conjured one for a long time, but I think I made it too strong," he smiled quietly. "It broke the glass."  
Only then did Black breathe. He bent and leaned on his knees, catching his breath and bringing a hand to his chest.  
"Merlin, you..." He grunted. "You scared me to death! I thought..." He nodded, looking briefly at Remus, and he came to Sirius and rested his hand on his shoulder.  
"It was just a patronus, Sirius."  
"Pads, Moony said when I grow up I can have one too!" Harry ran to the godfather's side as the astonishment passed, and he held his arms, almost shouting with excitement. "He said that the animal changes for each person! Do you think mine can be a wolf too? Moony's is so cool!"  
Sirius sighed and laughed, bending down to be about his size.  
"Yours is going to be something different and similar to you, buddy." Sirius smiled. "And it’ll be wild! Do you want to see mine?"  
Harry nodded, smiling. Sirius stood up and pulled his wand from his jeans pocket, pointing it in the air.  
"Guess what it is!"  
Harry laughed.  
"What do you think about when conjuring yours?" The boy asked curiously. Sirius stared at him briefly and left the happiest memory that had flood his mind.  
"Your father." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and for your comments! Please, keep commenting and feel free to ask me anything on my Tumblr (@amortentiando), I'm always avaliable!   
> P.S: Until now the story was basically a prologue, showing Harry's life while growing up. Next chapter is going to be the start of the first part of the story - the philosopher's stone. That's when the flashbacks to the Marauders Era are gonna start. Thought some of you would like to know that!
> 
> ¹ The list Remus wrote was inspired by this amazing post http://natalieweewrites.com/post/132031410781/reasons-to-not-kiss-him-1-you-werent-raised

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much if you read all the way through here and I hope you can let me know what you think of it so far! You can look for me on Tumblr anytime under the address @amortentiando.  
> Also, let me know if you want me to post it in portuguese too.


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